What is World War II?

(WWII) was
the largest war in the history of the world.  It involved the most people, and the most
countries of any war ever.  It also ended up killing more people than any other war ever did.
 This war is generally said to have started in September of 1939 and to have ended in August of
1945.

World War II pitted two coalitions of allies against one another.  On
one side was the Axis, whose main powers were Germany, Japan, and Italy.  On the other side were
the Allies, whose main powers were Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States.  The
war was generally about the desire for more power on the part of the Axis.

The war was generally separated into two main theaters.  These were the European
theater and the Pacific theater.  War began in Europe first, when Germany invaded Poland in
September of 1939.  The war in Europe originally involved only Britain and France against
Germany, with Italy somewhat involved.  The Soviet Union got involved in June of 1941 when it
was invaded by Germany.  The war in the Pacific started on December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked
the US at Pearl Harbor.  This theater was mainly an American-Japanese war.  The US also got
heavily involved in the war in Europe.

The war ended with the utter defeat of
the Axis.  Italy had surrendered separately relatively early in the war but Germany and Japan
fought on until May and August of 1945,respectively.

How does Biff as a football hero embody his father's dreams in Death of a Salesman?

Willy
Loman has conventional aspirations for himself and his family. Because he believes in a standard
version of the American dream, he imagines that he and his sons as reaching the kinds of goals
that are widely promoted in popular media. He also over-privileges other peoples opinions, so he
instills in his sons the idea that being liked is more important than pride in ones own
achievements. The idea of celebrity is, therefore, totally consistent with the limited view that
Willy has of success. He apparently has not consideredor more likely refuses to considerBiffs
actual abilities or the tremendous odds against any individual reaching the pinnacle of
professional sports achievement.

Willy promoted Biffs achievements as the
reason for feeling and expressing pride in his son. Therefore, when it was shown that Biff would
not go on to gridiron fame and glory, Willy no longer had a basis for that pride or for the
praise that would accompany it. He also internalized Biffs failure as a reflection of himself.
The lack of a practical plan also hindered Biffs ability to find a suitable job or career and to
grow into a mature adult. The negative effects of his fathers disappointment, combined with the
idea that he betrayed Linda, together contributed to Biffs arrested development, which was yet
another factor in Willys failed dreams.

What is the summary for Chapter 8 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone?

The next
day everyone is talking about Harry Potter. Hes famous among the students, and it makes it hard
for Harry to adjust to the new school. He gets on the wrong side of the caretaker, Filch, by
accident, and Harry discovers that everyone hates Filch and his cat Mrs. Norris. Harrys classes
consist of Herbology with Prof. Sprout, History of Magic with Prof. Binns, Charms with Prof.
Flitwick, Transfiguration with Prof. McGonagall, Defense Against the Dark Arts with Prof.
Quirrell (who turns out to be a lousy teacher), and Potions with Prof. Snape. During breakfast,
the mail is delivered by owls to the students. Harry receives mail from Hagrid, asking him to
tea. Harry has his first Potions class, and discovers that Snape hates him, taking two points
away from Gryffindor for things that arent Harrys fault. Harry and Ron meet Hagrid for tea, and
Harry reads an article about a break in at Gringotts that happened on the day Harry and Hagrid
were there. Hagrid doesnt answer any of Harrys questions, and Harry suspects that whatever the
thieves were after came from the vault that Hagrid emptied that day.

What were the slogans for Snowball and Napoleon in Animal Farm?

At the
beginning of chapter II, the author
states that " was a more vivacious character than ,
quicker in speech and
more inventive," and many of the early slogans can be attributed to
him. For
example, it is Snowball that paints and reads out the seven commandments that
become
the basis for most of the slogans.

The seven
commandments are as
follows:

1.
Whatever goes upon two legs is an
enemy.

2. Whatever goes
upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

3. No animal
shall wear clothes.

4. No animal shall sleep in a

bed.

5. No animal shall drink alcohol.

6. No
animal shall
kill any other animal.

7. All animals are
equal.

When the animals struggle to
learn the commandments by heart,
Snowball condenses them into the much easier
to remember "Four legs good. Two legs
bad."

In the end,
Napoleon, who doesn't seem have the same intelligence
as Snowball and
therefore the ability to control the animals throughalone, chases Snowball
off
the farm and starts to lead in a more brutal manner.

In the final chapters,
Napoleon's ideas seem nothing more than a
twist on Snowball's ideas and he slowly changes the
seven commandments to fit
his own lifestyle. For example, after Napoleon and the other pigs get
drunk,
Napoleon changes "No animal shall drink alcohol" to "No animals shall
drink
alcohol to excess." After Napoleon kills animals who he says are traitors, he
changes
"No animal shall kill any other animal" to "No animal shall kill any
other animal
without cause."

By the end of the book, the
seven commandments have been
reduced to one line. "All animals are equal, but
some are more equal than
others."

How does the Tom Robinson trial affect Maycomb county as a whole in "To Kill A Mockingbird"?

This is a
loaded question, as there is no one way all the people responded.  However, if we had to make a
generalization about the whole of Maycomb, the trial of Tom Robinson did not really impact the
people in any significant way.  The people go back to their own business, as if nothing
happened.  The trial is at best an entertaining spectacle.  Now that it is over, it is back to
work as usual.  Most of the town probably feels this, and so nothing really changes. 

Some people harbor fear and resentment in their hearts.  The women's
missionary society is a perfect example. One women feels unsafe in her bed.  The implication is
that someone like Tom Robinson might try to rape her.  Here is a quote:

S-s-s Grace, she said, its just like I was telling Brother
Hutson the other day. €˜S-s-s Brother Hutson, I said, €˜looks like were fighting a losing
battle, a losing battle. I said, €˜S-s-s it doesnt matter to em one bit. We can educate €˜em
till were blue in the face, we can try till we drop to make Christians out of em, but theres no
lady safe in her bed these nights.€˜ He said to me, Mrs. Farrow, I dont know what were coming to
down here.€˜ S-s-s I told him that was certainly a fact.

Finally, if we analyze the end of the book, it is clear that nothing in Maycomb really
changes.  For example, Miss Gates at school talks about the horrors of Hilter, but she cannot
see the problems in Maycomb.  This shows that the trial of Tom Robinson did very
little. 

 

What message is the author sending the audience through the imagery of Montresor's coat of arms in "The Cast of Amontillado"? What does it symbolize?

The Montresor coat of
arms has a golden human foot on a sky blue background; the foot is stepping on a serpent rampant
which is turning and biting into the heel of the foot even while the snake is being crushed by
it. Montresor explains that his motto is "'Nemo me impune lacessit,'" which is Latin
for No one harms me with impunity; the word impunity
means without punishment. This motto makes sense with the arms image itself
because the image shows a snake being stepped on while it simultaneously turns back to bite the
foot that is trampling it. The snake does not allow the foot to injure the snake with impunity;
the snake punishes the foot (and the person attached to it) for harming it by biting the
foot.

This seems to indicate that the Montresors are a proud family, and one
cannot injure a Montresor without expecting some kind of terrible retribution, some inevitable
payback or revenge. If we weren't already sure, this is one way that Poe lets us know that
Montresor means to do irreparable harm to his enemy Fortunato. The arms symbolizes his proud
need to repay Fortunato for the supposed injuries and insults Fortunato has offered him. This
could also be why the Montresor family was, in the past tense, "a great and numerous
family." Perhaps they have made too many enemies!

Borges and Allende use elements of magical realism to invite the reader to think about choice: the power of choice, the effects of choice, and the...

Among
Jorge Luis Borges's stories that explore
the idea of the labyrinth, "Garden of Forking
Paths" especially features this
motif. The character of Yu Tsun associates the concept with
his
great-grandfather, who resigned from a powerful government position to create a maze
so
complicated that everyone would lose their way inside. That choice also
overlapped with the
authors role in choosing words, as the ancestors also
wrote became a novelist, but the maze was
lost to memory.

In Yu's own time, the maze appears as the titular garden at
Albert's
house. In fact, it is Albert who reveals that the maze was metaphorical: it was
the
novel itself. It is labyrinthine in the author's decision to provide all
the characters' options
rather than the semblance of their being able to
choose. Thus the question of choice is turned
over to the reader as to their
preference among the possibilities offered.

In

The Stories of Eva Luna,
Isabel
Allende plays with mixing genres. The fantastic qualities of many of
the stories owe much to
traditional antecedents. Eva is frequently called the
modern day Scheherezade for the importance
of storytelling in sustaining and
transforming her life. Allende, like all shortwriters who
followed Borges,
owes much to his exploration of the relationships among reality, perception,

and memory. The blurring of author, narrator, and character also appears in some of her
works.
In these stories, the objectifying and technologizing of the word
often go hand in
hand.

Eva's eventual transformation takes
her from storyteller, a capacity in
which the tales exist in the teller's
mind and are thus infinitely changeable, to scriptwriter,
in which the text
is set but will be altered by the choices of the actors, director, and
camera.
This choice on Eva's part thus reduces the countless small choices
she made as a teller; the
surrender to technology reduces her
creativity.